


A Room of His Own

by Zen_monk



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zen_monk/pseuds/Zen_monk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Fenris sees the characteristic of each individual based on their habitat. What is hopefully an introspective look in how individuals express themselves depending on their environment, and how Fenris eventually creates his own identity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First Dragon Age fanfiction. Will include future Fenris/F!Hawke. There are instances of same-sex and hetero attraction, but are ultimately character studies.

A Blank Slate

 

All he owned was five silvers, eight coppers and some bits of hack-silver that could barely buy him a bit of flat bread from handcart vendors in Kirkwall’s Alienage. A small leather pouch with dried elfroot that could be boiled or chewed on, light and green-smelling, and it was all he could rely on for healing; it was just enough to ease sores and infection but without any injury kits to supplement he could only rely on not getting injured to keep his health. 

From another leather pouch on his belt, he had a smooth stone that he can used to hone his blade. He found two matches, a spool of thread and a broken needle, some bits of stale jerky, and finally a ring he had found on the road that had an inkling of magical protection that made his skin hum. 

Aside from is sword, his armor and his life,all his worldly possessions can be gathered and accounted for on a rough-hewn table that lie on the left hand side of the small room he rented in the Hanged Man. And that would soon be gone by the time the dawn appears. 

He placed his elbows on the table, mindful of splinters, and rested his forehead on his palms. He glanced over his things again, counting and reevaluating and thought this night to be the most disappointing of all nights. 

Upon arriving Kirkwall he hoped to blend in with the throngs of Fereldan refugees and the sullen masses of Lowtown. He hoped he could hide in the maddening alleyways that go nowhere, and lose himself in the labyrinthine steps that frequently challenges the most able-bodied into wondering whether the city is all hills and valleys of old, carved stone and mismatched windows. He could be like another hairline crack in the ground, another patch of weeds that grow incessantly and inoffensively in the corner like many others who insert themselves in city built on bleak histories and grotesque defiance. 

But he find that madness has a pattern, and each crack and gutter and drain that seemed more nonsensical as time passes had instead revealed symbols and half-images of things vaguely Tevinter, and when he realized how even his present and the city’s present is different from the past, shared history has determined that Tevinter luck would follow and there they be disembarking and making litters going up to Hightown to what was Denarius’ winter home. 

He spied the mansion from inconspicuous corners, playing the waylaid elf from distant lands and customs running messages for his masters, and saw to his immediate panic and horror that there were servants he knew scurrying about making the mansion ready. When he scrounged up enough bits, he had boys on the street giving him observations and with each new discovery his anxiety grew and grew and all the vague Tevinter remnants in the city began to recover more of their insidious meaning and it felt the high walls were reaching ever higher until he is a rat in a pit waiting for darkspawn to find and pop his head. 

With clarity, sudden as a dive into cold water, he thought that this would be it; the final confrontation; the last defiance. 

He gather what resources he could, made plans and sharpened his blades while imagining himself back in Seheron, with jungles so green it glowed with heat and the air is pungent, and in contemplation he decided he should end his run as it should have been when it first began: as a proud man free and unbidden, just like the Fog Warriors. 

He had seen his victory; he had seen his death. And Fenris focused on the reality in that Denarius is a powerful Magister and must also remember this is not a hit-and-run battle. 

And so he hired what he hoped were skilled mercenaries and upon meeting Hawke’s band his plans fell apart. 

There was no one in the mansion despite evidence proving the contrary. Kitchen fires lit. Candles lit on some sconces in hallways. Recently dusted mantles and bookcases and even the smell of fresh linen in bedrooms and on tables. There were, instead, Rage and Sloth demons and the sole horror that hid in Denarius’ bedroom when the key was found. The taint of blood was fresh upon slaying them back into the Fade, and it was clear that what transpired was the complete annihilation of the servants through demon summoning whilst their loathsome caster fled away. 

There was not a trace: no personal effects, evidence of spellcasting were removed, and not even a paper trail to dictate whether some dock guard gave a ship leave back towards Tevinter. All that transpired within the mansion were the vast splinters of wood from unsuspecting furniture, sheaves of paper on the floor next to corpses of books like a ravaging took place, glass and debris from ceiling to floor. Without the lingering traces of the Fade as proof, it looked like a sacking of a house in its off-season. 

“Gone,” the word left his lips more like a sigh than it did when he had said it towards Hawke. Gone was his resolution to break free, gloriously, and of valorous death. Gone was Denarius, of whom Fenris could admit a part of him still feared of the magister’s power and had been loathed to greet it. Yet also gone was certainty, and he remains unsure of whether he should run from Kirkwall, where a trap outside of the city’s parameters and her guardians could catch him unawares and unprepared, or stay in the place where at any moment he could be snatched unknowingly from the crowd by slave-traders in disguise. He could have, as he did before, run off with the nearest group mercenaries who are always looking around for new jobs and then be off on a new route once he felt he had made sufficient distance. He could have stolen away on a ship and go further south towards Fereldan or westward towards Orlais or the Anders. He could even find an expedition ship to go further East, where the Qunari was said to have originated and wonder if maybe a place in the Qun is preferable from unbidden wandering. 

“Gone.” He said it to the empty air in his empty room that held only a chair, a table and a cot. The walls were uninsulated and thin, because he got a lesser room, and had gotten used to the loud snores and sleep sounds of others and the occasional fucking. Whatever evidence of past inhabitants were found only in smells, scratches in the wood and in the odd scraps of trash and paper found before being burned away in the grate. All would fade away in the passing of time, and a mark from yesterday would just as easily be a dusty stain the next. 

Fenris had nothing distinct to leave this room by, and nor had he ever wanted to by force of habit whether when he had been as a slave or as he is now as a runaway. He could leave now and nothing would be changed for the next guest. 

He thought again of Hawke, whose given name Marian gives a stark contrast in its femininity, and whose femininity can be observed the frayed robes she wore and on her face of which her cropped black hair enhanced rather than diminished. He saw the threat in her family name, on the streak of red on her face like a bloody badge and symbolized in her staff made of dark wood. He found a mage, though that had been no Denarius, and while he gave all his coin to her without regrets, he still felt compelled to place himself in her company out of gratitude. She helped willingly, though she had been tricked, and did so with a smile. He was almost prepared to beg if the one who answered Anso’s call hadn’t thought kindly of tricks, or of anything else that doesn’t provide gain. He was tired from dwelling on why, and decided that Hawke simply impressed him. 

The curtainless window gave change as the light outside grew progressivly brighter. He could hear the kitchens being fired and scullery maids beginning their work in the tavern. He came back from the fight late and sore, and used up the last couple of hours left in the night to dwell on past events. 

He got up and scooped his belongings back into their placements, and left the room as it had been when he first arrived.


	2. A Storyteller's Dwelling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before leaving the Hanged Man on the morning after the fight in Denarius' mansion, Varric spies Fenris and fills him in on what being with Hawke entails. Fenris sees a dwarf who collects histories other than his own.

“If it isn’t the elf who tricked us into fighting a Tevinter Magister.” 

Fenris didn’t deign to turn around fully, only stopped and turned his head left, not fully looking back but showing acknowledgment. 

“I pegged you for a silent type, if I hadn’t already observed your eloquence to convince others to fight against oppression and abuse of power. Then again, most people go silent when the truth is offered first and not after luring your audience in with a red herring.” 

“…You’re the beardless dwarf.” This time Fenris turned to face him fully. 

The dwarf gave an elegant bow. “Varric Tethras is the name. My family says that mercantile endeavors is our game, but I leave that to my heir brother. Stories are what I sell and applause is my gain.” 

It was early morning where the only bustle to be heard was in the kitchens and the sole scullery maid cleaning the tables and baking the bread. Drunkards still lay in a stupor upon folded arms on the tables, and the bartender does nothing but account his wares. Puddles are being mopped up and fires are being rekindled. The way Varric talked was as if he was in a great hall, and to Fenris’ experience most dwarves he knew talked as if they were still in great stone halls, if it hadn’t sounded so out of place in a setting so much in need of proper cleaning that it would need to be shut down a whole year in order to obtain a semblance of hygiene. 

“Applause brings no sustenance to the table; the fool in motley always gets the scraps and maybe the dregs of wine if lucky.” 

Varric tutted in admonishment, a gesture that would have earned a swift kick to the head if he weren’t already with him last night in the manse raining arrows upon demons with his crossbow. 

“You underestimate the addictive influence of stories, Ser Brood-a-lot. But I must ask, for the sake of the tale I’ll spin of last night, where are you going that looked almost as if you were going to skulk off anonymously like an Orlesian ending? I have to remind you that you made a promise towards Hawke that you’d aid in our mad adventure in the Deep Roads before you go gallivanting off like a symbolic shadow.” 

Fenris crossed his arms defensively, finding little patience for the dwarf’s ridicule. “Then I must give you a most mundane ending: I’m paid up until last night. I’ve no more coin for another stay in the Hanged Man.” 

Varric waved off the humble ending. “They only kick you out at the tenth hour of morning, to make sure you’re sober enough to walk out the door on your own feet. Come on: we need to keep you up to date on the Deep Roads Venture, or so my brother Bartrand liked to call it.” He tilted his head back to the stairs, to the thick door that was the only one in the establishment with five kinds of locks. 

Fenris gave a dour look at the door. “…You live here?” 

“Indeed,” said Varric, proudly. 

The elf looked more closely at the dwarf, at his glossy crossbow still slung across the back like he had also just came back from the battle at the mansion, at the clean tailored clothes and at the bright supple leather jacket certainly made of the finest Bronto hide. He scrutinized at the clean and kept hair, the freshly shaved face, and the steel-toed boots that looked well-shined and blackened. 

“…Are you this… establishment’s owner?” 

“I am actually his dearest friend.” 

Fenris frowned suspiciously and scowled. Varric gave his most winning smile. 

“Lead on, then.” 

* 

Stepping into Varric’s room was like stepping through a portal. Expensive Orlesian rugs padded their feet. Tapestries line the wall, each woven with an elaborate tale of Grey Warden glories and tragedies. Timely timepieces mount the mantelpiece alongside gleaming dwarven contraptions and exquisitely carved figurines. Leather-bound books lined Elven chest-high bookcases made of Sylvan-wood. Out of habit, he self-consciously wiped the soles of his feet against his calves and wiped his palms on his thighs. It was a habit he learned in Tevinter and while he hold disdain towards pretension he found none here and treaded carefully here out of respect. 

“Just to make things clear, I only inherited the Dwarven knick-knacks. Everything else if out of my own interest and curiosity.” 

“Most nobility would consider all priceless things curiosities rather than as respectable things.” 

“Good thing I’m not part of the noble caste, then.” 

Fenris side-eyed the dwarf. “No. It is common knowledge that the merchant class always had ties with the Coterie.” 

Varric placed his left hand on his chest and staggered theatrically to his desk. “You wound me, Ser Elf! Such accurate accusation must only be spared for the ones who are actually guilty and not to those unfairly associated.” He collapsed in his chair with a heaving sigh and gazed about his helplessly. “Ah… but I must tell you, if you’re going to take it with a grain of salt or not, that I put all my efforts to making sure the Tethras merchant family is squeaky clean and Coterie-less. Bartrand’s going to say that all credit goes to him, but we both know that my part in the family is exerted on making sure the guardsmen sees us legitimate and murder-free.” 

Fenris examined Rivaini fertility idol on a shelf, voluptuous and serene-faced. “Is this Bartrand the leader of this expedition?” 

“Officially.”

Fenris moved on to the books, and can identify which is Orlesian and which is Fereldan by way of examining their insignias and text styles. “And your role is…?” 

“Quality assurance. It’s not healthy for anyone to have only treasure-seekers and hired mercenaries as part of our merry band underground.” 

Fenris straightened his back, satisfied in his inspection. “Why does Hawke take such an interest in this?” 

“What’s inferred is that the expedition would bring fame and wealth to all participating. Provided, that we actually find treasure for wealth and survived to be famous. What’s implied is that all would bring back influence to her family and protection from the Templars, as apostate mages oft aspire.” 

The slave scoffed in disgust. “And once more, the one with unchecked power scurries for a hole to hide from those keeping them in check.” 

“Such as yourself?” 

Fenris glared back, sharply. 

“Those magical tattoos literally make you a marked man. I bet you were once caught red-handed, or rather, glowing lyrium murder-handed. Tell me, what did you do in Tevinter that would bring the ire of a magister master down upon you.” 

“I run around alive and free, away from a master’s gaze, and these are markings that I’ve never wanted that were given to me freely. A living treasure to behold and a useful weapon to be wielded.”

“Runaways are never free.” 

“And what does a man who has never been chained all his life would know such wisdom regarding slaves?” Fenris asked. 

“I know what it’s like to be in debt, whether you asked for it or not, and how freeing it truly is to be have paid it off. It may be hard to pay off those murder tattoos, as you’ve so clearly stated at Hawke who’ve said something similar, but where you’re from complete control over another person’s life usually suffices. Now how about this as a solution to alleviate your problem: if Hawke is able to benefit from this little venture into deep dark danger, she’ll gain enough clout to divert the Templars away towards less influential apostates. That same luck may apply to you.” 

“Even if I were to gain all the wealth of the Empress Celene, there would still be slave-catchers to drag me back to Tevinter.” 

“Your obtained wealth would include fire-forged brothers and sisters to defend you, if you prove valiant enough. Coin is not the sole unit of wealth. Fame brings supporters and allies could be gained through shared conflict. Look around you, elf.” Varric gestured toward his accumulated knowledge in various forms. “Do you think I have all of this to stroke my vanity- wait, let me rephrase that. Do you think that I have all of this because I see its value in terms of gold? I see the value in what they share with me, and as reminders of what I can share with others. Hawke may want gold and fame to secure herself as an affluent member of society, but you should know that she has a family living in squalor. A common enough tale of woe for anyone living in Lowtown and Darktown, but not a common enough tale for its significance to be diminished.” 

Varric gestured at the seat opposite him across the desk. Fenris looked at it warily before finally sitting down. It was the first time that anyone had ever invited him to sit as equals. 

“So Varric, are you a treasure seeker looking to add something to your room to share?” 

“I told you: I sell stories.” 

“Even if there’s no gold at stake? When you don’t have enemies encroaching upon your every step and lurking behind every shadow waiting to catch you? When you’ve no other power except a common resistance to lyrium and magic as is expected of your race, as well as a silver tongue?” 

“For an ex-slave, you’re surprisingly eloquent. Were you merely just a warrior slave?” 

“What do you need to prove to others when you don’t have to? I see comfort in your life that I envy, free from poverty and enslavement. Is it the thrill?” 

“I seek a past woven by experience, as opposed to my brother Bartrand, who seeks a past through physical objects that are survived from past glories.” 

Fenris looked around again, at each artwork and each sculpture and at every bookshelf. All were reminders of history and he was reminded that his own began with pain and then the numbing existence as a slave and his reawakening during the jungles of Seheron. He had wished many times for a reminder of that experience, and began to understand a little bit more about Varric. 

“All right then. What does the expedition entail and what must I do?”


	3. Pillaging Residences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 3 is now about Fenris getting a residence, and thus a "room of his own," but it'll take some time before he feels the concept of a "home" to go to, much less a sense of having something belonging to him.

Varric invited him to break their fast together, as a symbol of their newly made partnership, and when a decline was on the tip of his tongue, the servers that came in with platters laden with foodstuffs and fragrant dishes proved too much for his sensibilities. The meal was nearly uneasy, as from experience such an invitation was a prelude to slavers and captors coming in from all entrances before his mouth was full. But the fatigue felt from last night’s battle and disappointment coupled with loss of sleep and nutrition had forced Fenris into sitting down at a well-ladened low-rise table, upon an embroidered cushion that was far superior to the mattress that was in his room, and a feeling of resignation spread through his limbs as Varric merrily took a loaf a bread and cut it into slices for him. 

“I got my own greengrocer selling me the freshest produce, and a butcher in my pocket giving me the choicest cuts. The cook was Orlesian-trained and was once accidentally employed by a coterie member. And now languishes here amongst meat with sell-past dates and nearly rotten fruit. The kitchen once echoed with his personal despair and regrets, until I came along and gave him enough projects to fulfill both his obsessions and my belly.” 

“And you’ve not shared this bounty with the rest of the clientele?” Fenris asked between sips of fresh-squeezed fruit juice, the concentrated tang infusing his mouth that it hurt his gums. 

“If I do that, then it’ll really look like I own the place, and seeing as I’ve invested so much into the Deep Roads, I don’t know if I’d enjoy being stuck as a tavern-keeper paying off all debts.” 

He ate simply, having only bread and cheese and an apple, though the food spread boasted bowls of steaming porridge and morning dumplings and clear amber pots of honey. He took comfort in the fresh bread and halla cheese if only in the ritual of sharing grain and salt, since he had known many hosts who would break sacred hospitality. He only half listened at Varric’s various plans into scouring for treasure in the Deep Roads, though the dwarf confessed he had never been underground to know for sure. He mentioned a map held by a former Grey Warden, of which the subject and adjective together are in too much conflict to be believed. Varric decried over the hirelings that his brother has brought with them, calling them more useful as pack mules than as defenders against Darkspawn and so for added insurance he looked for Hawke and her brother, whose combined might as a force mage and a greatsword warrior would quickly annihilate large groups at once. 

“Hawke used to run with a smugglers’ group led by Athenril. Maybe you’ve heard of her? If you don’t, then that’s all right because they’re only small-time, but it’s takes having a pair of steel balls for a female elf to lead her own group. I don’t understand why Hawke wants to leave it for a risky Deep Roads expedition, but I guess she harbors notions of being a rich and powerful apostate rather than a criminal one. Both are still illegal, but you’d never think she’s cared about being an honorable person judging by that cheeky smile of hers.” 

At the discussion of apostates, the food turned to ash in Fenris’ mouth and a near sickly fluttering started to upset his stomach. Varric talked of magic and mages like he just found a most perfect swordarm or have achieved a successful barter. He remembered the jovial face that lit up when gathering a group of hunger demons into a single pile through force magic, only to be burned away by a well-thrown combustible flask courtesy of the brother. There was no malice in her face, but in those moments in battle when she insults a rage demon with a smile, it was just as easy to place that expression into harmful arrogance. 

Fenris closed his eyes when he remembered the night before at the mansion, the burning rage and the empty disappointment, and then further back into Tevinter and into humid summers and wet winters and the unearthly smell of sulfur and Librium during demon summonings and the triumphant shouts of the victors of impromptu honor duels in the streets, and always there was blood. 

“You all right there, elf?” 

Varric’s mellow voice, a strangely comforting sound that cuts through echoing memories, jerked Fenris out of reverie. 

“…I didn’t sleep much,” was his reply, and it was heavy with fatigue. 

“I can imagine. It was only last night when we first met you. I think we’ve discussed business enough. My limit at such events usually last about five minutes, anyway. You got a room here?” 

“No, I’m… I’m paid out.” 

“Let me loan you a room, then, for the sake of friendship-” 

“No.” His objection was sharp enough that Varric was rendered silent for a change. “No, I…” Fenris immediately softened his voice to amend things. “…I just need a walk.” 

*  
Dark thoughts led him down stairs that jut out awkwardly against the sides of apartments, past the smoking chimneys of furnaces and foundries that billow out dark smoke from iron and steel, and along narrow alleys that line up against murky green seawater with specks of metal shavings and filth floating on the greasy surface. Time approached to midday, and the usual foot traffic that Fenris would encounter even in the shadiest of walkways has stalled and there were moments when it seemed as though he was the only person walking about the city. He wondered if in parts of Kirkwall, businesses would temporarily close for a midday sleep like it would in Rivain or in the upper districts in Minrathous. 

The path he was on led him to an adjourning dock and it was not difficult to find the main offices and shipping depots where most of the ships and trading companies gathered. The sun is directly overhead, and he held his hand up near his brow to shield his eyes from the sun and the sea glare. Salt and fish and dank smells filled the air and in his nostrils, but being outside is far preferable to being inside any fish-gutting warehouses and open-aired marketplaces. Human workers paid him no mind, so intent were they in business transactions, mending fish nets and lugging lumber upon their shoulders. There were Fereldens pleading for work at an Orlesian trading company; surface Dwarves bartered vehemently over the cost of Rivaini silks and carpets with Starkhaven traders, and Fenris wondered if Varric knew of them. There were Elven ship-hands running on errands, and Fenris side-stepped from single-minded one walking briskly and nearly flinched when he saw scars creeping up from the collar of his shirt before the elf walked away from him. 

There was a food cart ran by a dark-skinned Rivaini with tightly knotted hair, frying a hot plate of squid and octopus tentacles on a stick. Fenris let go a few coppers for one, and was pleased when the man squeezed a slice of lime over his portion. He went to an empty step and tore at the tender flesh while gazing ponderously at the water. 

It was near here when during reconnaissance for any sign of Denarius or his slaves, that Fenris looked for anything that resembled Tevinter. Though Thedas does not begrudge traders from Tevinter from disembarking onto their shores, Tevinter traders and travelers were required to undergo extensive security checks and thorough searching through their cargo to prevent any trace of magisters from infiltrating Chantry-sanctified areas. Any complaints regarding discrimination was met with the cold gavel of Chantry laws and the angry shouts of citizen unrest, and it has been decreed in the Free Marches as well as in Orlais and parts of Rivain that any commercial or recreational vessel that with good evidence or suspicion to have harbored slaves or the trafficking of slaves are to be given automatic manumission upon discovery, and to encourage any to escape from their captors to the port authorities. 

Needless to say, other forms of contact by Tevinter is made more preferable by illicitly hiring other groups to do their dirty work. Or for the legal process of freedom to actually go through. Lawmakers here had never understood that a Tevinter slave would have it in them the thoughts of escape. 

Passersby glared at him with suspicion at the sword laid across his lap. He could feel the eyes on his ears, his armored shoulders, and upon the Lyrium threads on exposed spots on his arms. Tension gripped his body even when he chewed languidly on an octopus tentacle. All along his body, painful shadows crept over his skin and became a dulled ache in his bones, and in an alert part in the back of his head, the drive for battle hummed softly but ever-present. More than once, he wondered if this is how lyrium-addled addicts hear the song, and wondered why they would recollect the feeling in fondness. 

In his brooding, he idly listened to a couple of sailors sitting on crates nearby commenting on a storm that occurred off the coast of Kirkwall, which it brought not only wreckage upon their shores but also the Qunari where they now gathered into the compound. Fenris knew as much based on passing remarks tossed in open markets and from sullen mutterings in the Hanged Man about the Viscount hosting a compound full of Qunari, and he could scarcely believed it until he had passed by the aforementioned compound itself near the docks. He stared a little too long at the Sten posted at the gate, who had stared readily back at him, and at a certain period he snapped away too quickly for it to be not unlike a trained reaction from back in Tevinter. 

Outside from observing sensitive war-zones and public executions for prisoners-of-war, Fenris had never seen a Qunari under less than militant circumstances. He had heard that anyone can be Qunari, and not just the Kossith race, so for all he knew he may have actually met Qunari that weren’t aligned with the Arishok. But to hear that the militant arm of the Qunari himself to have shipwrecked so far south from Seheron, and not even anywhere near Tevinter shores, was unthinkable and more than queer. What would cause the Arishok be here would no doubt fall in line with the goals of the Qun, strange and foreign as it seemed to him, and he hoped that Tevinter’s wars doesn’t spread further into Thedas than it ought to be. 

The thought of a Qunari-Mage wars to spread further down through Orlais, through the Anderfels and to the Free Marches is too vague of a concept to give it form and contemplation. Even in the here and now, thoughts that ought to be at the forefront of his mind no longer take hold: slavers, and criminals, and Danarius still felt omnipresent yet with a distance that felt foreign. A Tevinter agent could approach him now and he wouldn’t care how he reacted. It seemed much more simpler to just cut any threat down and to not think of the usual escape route. He wondered if he would even care if a hired army of mercenaries approached him to send back to Danarius in pieces. 

The anger and fear never left him, but the inferno that once fueled him for vengeance and closure was reduced to ashes in the wind. 

Finished with his meal, he tossed the stick into lapping waters and stalked away from the docks. 

*  
The street hawkers in Lowtown brought more life to Lowtown than the tasteful shopkeepers of Hightown would ever try to invoke. With cautious eyes, he scanned faces and wares alike. Stalls crowd the narrow alleys, leaving nearly no room to make one’s way through the throng of shoppers, rich and poor. Spills are commonplace, as well as petty thievery. City guardsmen stalked authoritatively in pairs, albeit uncommon and few compared to Hightown’s level of security. In his sleep-deprived state affecting him more than usual, he didn’t notice that he walked past the very people who aided him last night and whom he offered his swordarm.

“Oy, sis, isn’t that the elf from last night?” 

He was immediately startled out of his ennui and turned around sharply, catching sight of the Hawke siblings and their dog with packages in their arms and eyes wide from surprise. Both parties didn’t say anything at first, Fenris with his mind a blank slate and the others considering him for a moment, and it was mage Hawke who broke the silence. She removed the apple from her mouth that she had been munching on before, swallowed a bit too hard, and gave a cheeky smile.

“So it is, Carver. Fenris, right? Fancy meeting you here in broad daylight after a fulfilling night.” 

Fenris looked at her with slight wariness, suspicious of her vitality after a trying night of demon-slaying and wondered briefly if she knew some sort of spirit magic to give her energy. 

“I wouldn’t say it was a fulfilling one, personally,” he answered slowly. He took a deep breath, the gears in his head finally moving full-swing as a pendulum clock, and said with more self-assurance, “though it just confirms some things for myself.” 

“And that is…?” asked Carver, doubt in his voice and in a raised eyebrow. 

Fenris merely shrugged and said, “It seems that I may have caught a break, for once.” 

*  
It was later in the afternoon, after escorting the Hawke siblings to their home (”the best hovel in Lowtown!” boasted the elder sibling whilst the boy groaned and rolled his eyes.) that they made their way to Hightown to Danarius’ mansion. They met with Aveline, who had just gotten out of her shift, and it took Fenris’ all to open the front door and go inside, the interiors still with the musty smell of lyrium and demon smut to match the grim exteriors of an empty and forlorn house. 

The remains of their battle is still fresh on the floors and the walls. Burnt furniture sat in a sooty pile to blend with the shadows. Some sconces in the foyer had burst and lay broken in pieces of glass and crystal. Books were frayed and pages were spilled from the bookshelves to the frayed carpet. There were dried, red smears on the walls and across the eyes of some portraits, no doubt from the unfortunate souls that did their serving in the mansion. The armory in the back rooms looked untouched, and so Carver and Aveline took stock and tested some weapons. The bottom cellar similarly looked unmolested and revealed neither secret passage nor the bones of wayward animals. Pieces of runes and craftsmaking were laid out in other rooms, and Fenris took it upon himself to kick open locked bedroom doors to reveal covered furniture in white sheets, which for all intents and purposes looked too much like molded bodies for them all to leave alone untouched. 

It was near evening when the search was done, and Aveline left them to back to the barracks, assured that Marian Hawke would head straight back to Lowtown, “And I hope to see no more remains of your late night romping when I wake up in the morning!” before the guardswoman closed the door behind her. 

Fenris didn’t bother to see them off, if they had started to leave the mansion back to Lowtown, and merely went down to the wine cellar. He came out with a bottle full of Orlesian burgundy, and was surprised to see the Hawke girl still lingered. 

“Now is that bottle part of the housewarming party?” she asked. 

Fenris closed his eyes in exhaustion and sighed. The lack of immediate response mollified Hawke and she said softly and without mirth, “Will you be all right, Fenris?” 

“I can take care of myself.” 

“Wine bottles can only give care for so long. Learned that from personal experience.” 

“You had the luxury of Orlesian wine?” Fenris asked wrly. 

The light smirk returned and she answered with a toothy smile, “That experience comes from personally tossing out the hanger-ons in the Hanged Man. For Varric’s sake, of course.” 

“Of course.” 

Silence fell over them once again, more contemplative and comfortable, and its ease felt new to him and almost comforting. 

“Are you going to stay here?” she asked. 

“I’ve no coin for a room. Perhaps just for a night.” 

“Planning to catch Danarius in case he came back?” At that, Fenris visage darkened and he looked around the room in a grimace. 

“It’s strange. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to care whether he returned or not. I doubt he would, after expending his energies and makeshift army last night. And of course, it is by the courtesy of this Meredith that perhaps he would feel unsafe in what used to be familiar territory.” Fenris let his face fell and muttered, “No. He won’t be coming back for a while.” 

“Then make this your base of operations.” 

Fenris looked up sharply at her. “What?” 

“I think you’ve obviously earned it, what with the disposing of unsavory residents, and right now Templars are moving around the streets of Hightown, much as I’ve failed to appreciate their efforts. Might as well make this your own.” 

“I’ve… never thought about pillaging a residence before,” he admitted, suddenly the idea growing on him. 

Hawke then approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder, the action shocking him and he flinched back slightly. She lowered the hand and said sheepishly, “Maybe take the opportunity to start claiming things as your own.”


End file.
